No doubt about it — 2013 will be remembered in Chicago as the year the city lost a familiar and beloved brand name in the grocery store business. Yes, after some 96 years, Dominick's will close for good on Dec. 28. Earlier this fall Dominick's parent Safeway Inc. (NYSE: SWY) said it intended to exit Chicago and would attempt to sell more than 70 Dominick's stores in the metropolitan Chicago area to other interested grocers.

But with less than two weeks to go before Dominick's disappears, parent Safeway has only sold some 15 stores — four to Jewel-Osco, the dominant Chicago area grocery chain, and 11 to Mariano's, a unit of Milwaukee, WI.-based Roundy's (NYSE: RNDY) that is looking to expand its footprint in the Chicago area.

If Safeway isn't able to find a last-minute buyer for the more than 50 remaining Dominick's stores, some 6,000 Dominick's employees could be out of work by year's end. Already many shelves at Dominick's stores have been stripped of merchandise, leaving shoppers little incentive to visit the outlets for their last-minute holiday grocery needs. Increasingly, it looks as if Dominick's final days will be quite sad.

The demise of Dominick's is a horrible development, but one reflecting a seismic shift in Chicago area grocery store dynamics that accelerated in 2013. Dominick's — a mass-market, middle-of-the-road grocer — found itself fatally squeezed at both the high end by expanding grocery chains such as Mariano's and Whole Foods (NASDAQ: WFM), and at the low end by aggressive chains with low-ball pricing such as Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Target (NYSE: TGT), Meijer, Aldi and Trader Joe's, which have begun to greatly increase their presence and their competitively-priced grocery offerings in the Chicago market.

At least one study of the Chicago grocery market in 2013 clearly indicated all the growth in the grocery store business here was coming at the low and high ends, leaving the likes of Dominick's and Jewel-Osco to fend for themselves as the only major players in the middle of the spectrum. Clearly Jewel-Osco, with its huge footprint including more than 170 stores, has won the battle between what had been two high-profile mass-market chains.

Since Dominick's announced it was closing, many shoppers have expressed deep regret about the decision, even while indicating they liked having the stores available to them. But those very same fans apparently weren't giving Dominick's enough of their business in the past months and years to enable the chain to keep its doors open and turn a profit.

So Chicago must get ready to say goodbye to Dominick's. The end is here.

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